“Don’t tell me to calm down! I am not going to calm down!” Mae continued after Ezra mistakenly suggested she relax a bit. “I don’t need to be reasonable! This isn’t something that we should be reasonable about! This is life and death, Ezra!”
“I know that, Mae! That’s exactly why we need to think about this!” Ezra raised his voice, but there was nothing angry about it. He was just trying to be heard over her. “But everyone else in the house doesn’t need to hear us yelling about this.”
“I don’t care how who hears anything!” Mae retorted, followed quickly the sound of something glass smashing, like a vase or a glass. Matilda barked in response and Mae snapped at her to shut up.
“See?” Bobby whispered meekly, but the things that made him cower were exactly the reasons I felt like I had to intervene. Peter was still in his room, trying to sleep from the slow sound of his heart beat, so that left me as the only one here that could help out.
I walked carefully down the stairs, not entirely sure what I might walk into. Matilda stood at the edge of the living room, looking as worried as a dog can look. Mae was standing to one side of the living room, and she was even worse than she was yesterday. Her hair was a frizzy mess, and her skin was blotchy from yelling and crying so much. She hadn’t changed her pajamas in days, and I’m not sure the last time she had eaten, but she looked even paler than normal. On the floor front of her, glass was shattered all over floor. There had been a heavy glass statue of a swan on the mantle, and she would’ve had to thrown it very hard to make it shatter like that. Luckily, nobody was hurt by the flying chunks of thick glass.
“You’ve woken Alice,” Ezra told Mae, almost tiredly. He was standing on the far side of the room across from her, wearing silk pajama pants and a tee shirt. Apparently, they had started fighting immediately after waking up. It was still fairly early, so they had actually probably just woken up.
“No, I was awake. I just got of the shower.” I tugged at my hair to demonstrate. It was dripping wet down my back since I hadn’t had a chance to dry it after lunging out of the shower to see what all the fuss was about.
“I don’t care if I wake her! I don’t care if I wake anybody!” Mae shrieked, raising her head to the ceiling so she could wake anybody else that might be sleeping. I had never seen Mae have any kind of disregard for anybody before, and I couldn’t imagine what we had all done to upset her so much.
“Will you knock it off? This isn’t about them. This isn’t their fault,” Ezra told her firmly.
“How is not about them?” Mae looked completely appalled and pointed at me, but she refused to look at me. I was starting to think that maybe Bobby had been right, and I should’ve stayed hidden upstairs. “This is completely about them! They’re why you won’t do this!”
“No, that’s not true. They have no bearing on this,” Ezra shook his head.
“Bloody hell they don’t! They have everything to do with it! You wouldn’t even turn Alice because her brother had just turned, and I know you wanted her to turn!” Mae gave him a knowing look that I didn’t understand, and he shook his head. “Don’t be so damn condescending with me, Ezra! I know you! And I know that you turned her brother for her! So why won’t you do this for me?”
“This is entirely different situation, and I won’t do this. I won’t let you do it. Absolutely not.” He was quiet, but his voice was so firm and finite. I would never be brave enough to challenge Ezra when he spoke like that.
“Dammit, Ezra!” Mae wailed, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You can’t deny me this!
You have no right! No right!”
“I cannot allow this, Mae, and I am sorry.” He pursed his lips tightly, but didn’t budge. Mae looked like she was about ready to collapse, but he made no move towards her. I wanted to help her, but I was afraid of how she might react to me, and if wasn’t going to tend to her, then I didn’t think that I should either.
“You are not sorry! You are cold and you are cruel, and I cannot spend my life with you!”
She was sobbing so hard she had to grip onto the back of the chair to keep from falling over. “I will not let you make this decision for me! You can’t!”
“You’re right. I cannot make this choice for you, but I will not tolerate it, either. You can do whatever you like, but you will not be allowed in my house with that abomination,” Ezra said coolly.
“Abomination?” Mae was incredulous and her voice cracked. “We are the abomination! She is merely a child, and I want to save her!”
“You cannot save her, Mae! You can only turn her into a monster!” Ezra insisted.
“Like we are monsters?” Mae brushed a strand of her hair from her eyes and looked down at the floor. “Maybe we are, and maybe she would be too, but she would have a life. And it wouldn’t be a bad life.
She could have everything that we have to offer.”
“We have nothing to offer her,” Ezra replied.
“How can you say that?” Mae gaped at him, then she looked over at me, looking at me with hate for the first time. It caught me off guard, and I nearly flinched. “Is it because of her? Because of Alice? She gets everything you have to offer? You let Jack turn her and gave him no repercussions, even though you had just turned her brother. For her. She is not the only thing in this life that needs you, Ezra! In fact, I don’t think she even needs you! You aren’t that indispensable to her!” Her lips quivered and she glared at him. “You aren’t that indispensable to me either!”
“If I’m some kind of burden, I can leave. I don’t want to cause any problems between you two,” I interjected quietly. I hadn’t completely figured out what their fight was about yet, but I certainly didn’t want to be the source of it.
“You’re not a burden,” Ezra assured me, looking apologetically at me. “Don’t worry yourself with this. You can go up to your room.”
“What if she moves out?” Mae latched onto the idea of something, and her entire demeanor changed to one of pleading. She took a few quick steps closer to Ezra, deftly missing all of the broken glass on the floor. “She and Jack could move out. He can take care of her, and Milo is already selfsufficient. Peter is already gone most of the time anyway, and it’s only a matter of time before he goes his own way entirely. We have the room, and we have the time.”
“Alice and Milo are not ready to their own like that,” Ezra admonished her. “And it isn’t about them!
You keep trying to solve something that isn’t the problem. Even if everyone moved out, and it was just the two of us, I would still say no. This cannot be done, Mae, no matter what anybody else does or doesn’t do.”
“Ezra! There has to be something!” Mae moved towards him and knelt on the ground at his feet. He managed to look both sympathetic and vaguely disgusted. She was literally begging him, and when she took his hand, he didn’t pull away, but he wouldn’t look directly at her. “Ezra! Please! I have never asked you for anything like this before!”
“You’ve asked me for plenty like this before, and I have indulged you to much,” Ezra sighed. “But I cannot do this. I won’t.”
Mae let go of his hand and sat back on her heels. Closing her eyes, she rubbed at her forehead, and I knew she was trying to think of something. In her mind, there had to be some magic argument that would make him change his mind, but if there was one thing I knew about Ezra, once he made his mind about something, it could not be changed.
“What if she wanted it?” Mae looked up at him, but she was talking about me. I was getting increasingly uncomfortable with the way she talked about me like I was standing right here.
“I don’t know why you have this idea that I have some special relationship with Alice,” Ezra sounded almost tired by the idea, but he wouldn’t look at me.
“Because you turned her brother for her! I know you were against adding more vampires to our numbers, but you did that for her anyway!” Mae stared up at him.
“Yes, and I did the same with Jack, for you,” Ezra looked sever
ely at her, and her face darkened with shame and she looked down at the floor.
I had no idea what Ezra was talking about. From what I knew, Peter had turned Jack in order to save his life. The story had I heard from everyone never made any mention of Mae or Ezra in at all. It had been a random act of compassion, and for some reason, that made Mae squirm.
“That was different,” Mae said quietly.
“Yes, it was. Because Alice actually cared for her brother. He wasn’t just some random kid,” Ezra had finished scolding her and looked off at the wall behind her. “And he’s young, but Milo is not a child.”
“She is innocent! She deserves a life!” Mae twisted a tissue in her hands, then turned to look at me.
Her face was an expression of total agony, and her gentle eyes were pleading with me.
“Alice, tell him! I don’t care what he says! He’ll listen to you! If you tell him that he needs to do this, he will!”
“I-I don’t really know what you’re talking about.” I looked to Ezra for help, but he just looked grimly at me. “I can’t tell him anything if I don’t know what you’re asking.”
“My great-granddaughter Daisy,” Mae said imploringly, silent tears sliding down her face.
“She is only five years old, and she’s going to die. She hasn’t had a chance to live her life yet. But we turn her, she can live forever. She can do anything!”
“Except grow up,” Ezra reminded her firmly. “She can never fall in love or get married. Her emotions will never completely mature, but she’ll have the wisdom of an old man. She’ll never be able to live on her own or drive a car or even go to a bar. She’ll depend on you for everything, forever, and that may delight you, but she’ll hate you for cursing her to this life. On top of all that, other vampires will never accept her, or you, for it. They’ll try to kill her because she’s an abomination against everything we are. And that says nothing to our more perverse underbelly, who thrive on making childlike vampires to live as their slaves or to trade with human pedophiles in exchange for blood. Is that really the kind of life you want for her? Do you think that’s what her hopes and dreams amount to?”
“It won’t be like that,” Mae insisted, shaking her head. “We will protect her and love her, and she’ll have everything a child could ever want.”
“But she won’t really be a child forever! She’ll be a woman trapped in a child’s body with a child’s temperament for all of eternity! That is a horrible thing to do to someone you claim to love so much!” Ezra shouted gravely.
“You don’t understand!” Mae looked up desperately at him, and he met her eyes. “I cannot let this happen! I swore I would never watch another one of my children die!” Ezra exhaled deeply and matched her intense expression with a calm one of his own.
“Then don’t watch,” Ezra replied coolly.
“Ezra!” I shouted, unable to believe that he would say something that cold to Mae, when she was obviously going through something insanely painful and difficult.
“I know she is hurting, but I can’t do this!” Ezra’s collected façade evaporated for a moment, and he was merely exasperated and worried. Mae had gone back to looking at the floor and crying, and for a brief second, Ezra just looked completely lost. “There is nothing I can do to rectify this situation!”
“So then comfort her! Don’t yell at her!” I told him, still in shock over how icy he had been to her.
“No, it’s alright, Alice,” Mae said wearily and shook her head. “I knew what I was going to get from him. Ezra is many things, but he is predictable above all else.” Sighing heavily, she slowly got to her feet. She wiped the tears from her face and tried to smooth out her hair. When she had composed herself a bit, she turned to look at him. “I will do what I have to do.”
“I understand that, but you will not do it in my house,” Ezra said evenly.
“I know.” Mae nodded once, and then turned and walked slowly back to her room.
For a moment after she left, I just stood and tried to catch my breath. I had never seen the two of them fight about anything before, let alone something as intense as that. I knew that Ezra was right, that turning a child into a vampire was an impossible idea, but I knew how desperate Mae was to do anything to protect her family. Finally, Ezra started to move, picking up the pieces of broken glass of the floor, and I went over to join him.
“You were too cold with her,” I said quietly, picking up a large chunk of glass. My hair was still dripping water cold down my back, and I tucked it behind my ears. Part of me felt nervous at the thought of contradicting Ezra about something like this, but he had no reason to be that cruel.
“She wouldn’t have listened to anything else. She’s been pleading me with since she found out about the child being ill, and I decided that being forthright was the best avenue to take.” Ezra was incredibly tired, and I wasn’t sure if he was over what the lycan had done to him yet, either.
“Why is she pleading with you?” I asked, looking up at him. “I mean, if this is what she wants, then why doesn’t she just do it herself? Why does she need your permission?”
“She’s never turned anyone before, and she’s afraid to, especially with a child so young. She thinks she’ll do it wrong somehow, even though there is no real wrong way.” He had picked up most of the large pieces of glass, everything that we could get without a broom, so he stood up and tossed the broken bits into the fireplace. It didn’t seem like the best place to me, but since I had done it, I followed suit and threw what I had picked up into the fireplace.
“So is she going to do it if you don’t?” I asked.
“I honestly don’t know.” Ezra put his hands in his pockets, staring down at the ground. His normal booming voice had never sounded quite so defeated before. “She wasn’t really asking my permission, either.
She just knows my stand on it. If she turns the child, I will not be her. I won’t go through that heart ache with her. Neither of them would survive it, not for long. Child vampires never do.”
“What do you mean?” I pressed. The youngest vampire I had met had been Violet, and she was fourteen. I couldn’t imagine what one would be like younger than that. Would they look older too, the way that Milo and Violet both looked about nineteen?
“They go insane, or they’re killed,” Ezra said simply. “They learn, but can’t mature. They get old, but can’t grow. They get impulses they can’t control. They’re volatile and strong and never really understand the consequences of their actions. Other vampires don’t like having them around, and they don’t like being alive.
It never ends well.” He ran a hand through this blond hair and breathed in deeply. “And if Mae were to change her, to get even more attached to the child than she already was, she would either die trying to protect her, or kill herself after the child died. And I have no interest in being a part of that.”
“And Mae doesn’t see that?” I asked, even though I knew the answer. She was too blinded by her love for her family to see any rational thought. Her only concern was keeping the girl around for another day, at any cost.
“No.” He gave me a sad smile. “She mistakenly believes that I can do anything. But I can’t this time.”
His expression was far away. “I cannot save the child. There is only one type of death versus another. The child will suffer, and then die, either way. But Mae cannot accept that.”
“Are you going to go talk to her? Maybe you can help her accept this. I mean, she’s just going through the seven stages of grief, and it sounds like she’s at bargaining,” I said hopefully.
“Maybe, but unfortunately, she actually has something to bargain with. Most people have no other recourse, but Mae does. Would anyone really move past bargaining if God would actually talk to them and listen to their pleas?”
“Did you just compare yourself to God?” I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Accidentally,” Ezra admitted, looking disgusted at his own choice of words. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to.<
br />
But at any rate, I don’t think I have to say can help Mae through this.” He sighed heavily.
“But… my clothes are in the room, and I should probably get dressed.”
“Are you two going to split up?” I was surprised how nervous I sounded, but really, they were the only stable couple I had ever met. And if they split up, what hope did the rest of us have?
“I will stay with her as long as she’ll have me, and as long as she doesn’t turn the child,” Ezra said, but that was the kind of answer people gave when they weren’t ready to tell the kids they were breaking up. I was starting to think that maybe it was only a matter of time before things ended between them, and that was terrifying. I loved them both, and I couldn’t imagine a life where they weren’t both in it. I wasn’t ready for that at all.
Ezra went down to his room to try and calm Mae, and get ready for the day. For someone who was completely obsessed with the idea of family, I couldn’t believe how rigid he was being with Mae. He was right about not turning her granddaughter, I’m sure, but he was inflexible when talking to her. He had been willing to die to save Peter, but he wouldn’t allow the same irrational passion in her. Maybe it was because this was his way of protecting the family. If she did this, it would certainly devastate everything around her, himself included. I don’t know what would happen to our family unit. If we would split up between them, like children of divorce, or… I don’t know.
It was strange, because even though I knew I was going to live a very long time, I had somehow had expected that everything would stay the same forever. Mae had told me that they would move in a few years, but I couldn’t imagine living anywhere but this house, with all of them, even Peter. Ezra had once told me that everyone I know would die, and that I would outlast everything. But I had never believed that I would outlast this family.
Chapter 16
When Milo and Jack finally came back from their blood run, I reluctantly told them about the fight. I felt like it wasn’t my place to let on what was going on, but at the same time, they knew something was up and I was horrible at keeping secrets. Milo went down to try to talk some sense into Mae, and we let him. Jack still invited Peter to watch a movie with us, but after all the drama of the morning, we decided to watch something lighter than an epic British mini-series. So we went with the opposite, and put in Futurama.
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